AggroChat #118 – The Cities: Skylines Show

Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam, Thalen and Inky talk about Cities: Skylines the July AggroChat Game Club Game

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After putting it off a week due to folks travelling, this week we record the July AggroChat Game Club show for our title of the month Cities: Skylines.  In this episode we talk about just how deep the rabbit hole of simulation goes with this would be king of city and mayor simulators.  In many ways this show is the tail of many failed cities and a handful of successful ones.  It is also when we learn just how bad of a mayor Belghast would be.  This title is the heir to the Sim City lineage, so we ask the question how it stacks up.  We also ask the question if city simulation is really that fun?  Additionally we get into a side tangent about wastewater management.

Thalen Reads Lord Valentine’s Castle #Blaugust2016

You are very peculiar. You speak no lies, yet nothing you say sounds right.I think you yourself have little knowledge of your own soul. - Carabella
This week, it's a return to older science fiction with the first book of Robert Silverberg's Majipoor series, Lord Valentine's Castle.


 I've read quite a few short story collections edited by Robert Silverberg over the years, but this is the first book actually written by him that I've read. Obviously I knew going on that he's a Grand Master of Science Fiction, so I expected great things. Happily I wasn't disappointed.

Lord Valentine's Castle is set on the world of Majipoor and is one of those novels that could easily be classified as science fiction or as fantasy depending on what your definitions are and how hard-nosed you want to be about it. It certainly feels like fantasy in a lot of ways; magic exists and wizards are common enough to be hired by caravans, dreams are sources of knowledge or dread punishments, and there are many non-human races. But on the other hand, space travel exists and spaceships come to Majipoor (though very rarely), vehicles float via technological means and are pulled by genetically modified herd beasts, and both the human and non-human races are immigrants from other planets, apart from a native race that is not very well treated.

We learn about this setting through the eyes of Valentine, a man who finds himself on a hill outside a city with no real memory of his past (take a drink). The new Coronal of Majipoor (one of the rulers of the planet) is visiting this very city, and just happens also be named Valentine. It's not hard to see that the Valentine we're following is somehow the real Lord Valentine and has been replaced by an impostor. Happily, Silverberg didn't try to stage this as some big reveal; both the replacement and who is behind it are verified about a quarter of the way into the book.

The main conflict of the book then centers around Valentine's quest to regain his title, although he does question whether really wants to do so. Even once he knows what has been done to him he doesn't really remember the person he was. He's fallen in with a troupe of traveling jugglers and has discovered he has a talent for the art. Does he really want to give up this new life for a title he doesn't truly miss?

The majority of the book is taken up by travels across Majipoor, first as a juggler with his new troupe and then as the deposed Coronal attempting to first prove his story and then amass a force with which to assault the castle of the Coronal and reclaim his title. Silverberg uses this to give us a sort of travelogue. Valentine and his companions pass through a reservation where some of Majipoor's distrusted and downtrodden natives live, take ship with a crew of sea-dragon hunters, fall afoul of some of Majipoor's carnivorous plant life, and so forth.

I enjoyed Lord Valentine's Castle quite a bit, certainly enough to seek out and read more of the books in the series. Apparently there are a number of them and quite a few short stories and novelettes, most of which take place prior to this book. I'm not sure if any of them go more into how Majipoor was colonized and how it's system of government came to be, but I'd certainly be interested to learn more about that.

My Backpack’s Got Jets #Blaugust2016

I've been trying to think of what to write about without a whole lot of luck. I've got some things to say about Stellaris, but I don't really have my thoughts totally organized on that. I don't feel like I've done anything else in Final Fantasy that warrants more discussion of that. And that's really all the gaming I've been doing recently. I suppose there are a couple of mobile games, but I don't have a lot to say about them at the moment.

So I'm going to share with you today a couple of videos that I was reminded of thanks to a conversation about Star Wars Galaxies. SWG was unique in a lot of ways when it came out, one of which was the entertainer system. There were whole skill trees for dancing and music that unlocked dance moves and the ability to play different instruments as you advanced. The moves could be chained together and even synchronized with other players to let you perform as part of a band. Nowadays, Lord of the Rings Online is probably the game best known for its music system, but when it was new SWG had something different that I had never seen before.

Using those systems a player going by Balgosa Windspire recorded some of the first machinima I ever saw; a number of music videos using the Star Wars setting. The graphics look a bit dated now, of course, but you have to remember this was around 2004, so well over 10 years ago. At the time these were all very impressive, and they're still pretty entertaining.  Bringing them up in conversation got me wondering if perhaps they were on YouTube. As it turns out, Balgosa has a channel and all of his old work has been uploaded to it. So that's what I'm bringing to your attention today. I hope you enjoy them!






Jo-Jo the Man Faced Dog #Blaugust2016

Now that I'm back playing Final Fantasy XIV, I will of course be participating in any limited time game events that come along. Of course there are the holiday events that we get every year, the next one of which starts tomorrow and has a Super Sentai theme this time around. But right now, there is a collaboration event going on with Yo-kai Watch. And I love it.

Okay, so the event itself is pretty much just a long FATE grind. Earn new Yo-kai minions by grinding FATES wearing a Yo-kai Watch, then earn weapons to use for glamouring by grinding more FATES with those minions summoned. The event runs a little over two months, and that's good because it'll take a lot of FATES to earn weapons for every class. So far I've got the Bard, Summoner, Scholar, and Paladin ones and am working on Machinist.

Each minion is a character from the Yo-kai Watch games; there are a number of cat spirits, a couple that I believe are bears, a nine-tailed fox spirit, and so forth.

And then there's Manjimutt.

Jo-Jo the Man Faced Dog #Blaugust2016
Gaze upon his awesome countenance and be humbled

Yokai are Japanese spirits, some of which were once living beings. For instance Jibanyan, one of the mascot Yokai, was a normal cat that got run over by a truck. Manjimutt was a salaryman who died alongside a poodle, resulting in the two being merged into a single Yokai. He's actually based on a Japanese urban legend, the jinmenken. This is the kind of fascinatingly weird Japanese mythology I just love.

So that's what I've been up to in FFXIV when not raiding. Collecting weird ghost pets and weapons associated with them. Manjimutt is probably going to my go-to pet summon for the near future, because he's just hilarious. And as I discovered when learning more about him to write this post, he's also quite the dancer.